


The Fire Under the Earth

by ionthesparrow



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Greek Mythology - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-03-31 03:30:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13966416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ionthesparrow/pseuds/ionthesparrow
Summary: Luke knew what you consumed became a part of you. And where you consumed, you stayed.





	The Fire Under the Earth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thistidalwave](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistidalwave/gifts).
  * Inspired by [hot to the touch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4501641) by [thistidalwave](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistidalwave/pseuds/thistidalwave). 



> Thanks to challenge organizers, and to my recip for me letting me play with their fic!

* * *

 

When Luke thinks of the time he disappeared and reappeared at the edge of the world, as though he had fallen through a crack in the earth and landed in Edmonton, he thinks of a party held at a teammate’s house. A party held in the lull between camp and the beginning of the season, when everything and everyone was still new. He thinks of the early-dropping dark in an unfamiliar neighborhood, stepping out of his car to crunch brown grass, dead but not yet covered over. His breath had hung in the air and the cold wound its way down his throat and into his chest. There was no snow yet, but the air smelled like it was not far away. 

That night, he drank beer and wine that tasted like the last dregs of autumn – all spice and charcoal and the hope of preservation. All around him milled the bodies of people who would be his friends, but were then still specters of passing acquaintance. All of them were lit irregularly by a crackling fire pit that gave them the illusion of transparency. Luke moved among them, seen and not seen, his vision – and theirs – blurred by drink and unsteady light and the world was a fractured, distorted mirror of itself, as it might look reflected in hammered tin or smoked glass. 

He pushed inside, and after the cold, the heat of the kitchen made his face burn. 

Then he missed a beat, and there was a body in front of him that had not been there a moment before. A shape that loomed, and when Luke reached out, the heat of that body burned him, too. 

He knew that it was Taylor, although he had no memory of noticing or realizing. The knowledge of who stood in front of him was just in his mind as though it had always been; the instant of translation or revelation lost. Taylor’s lips were stained wine-red and parted, and his hands were on Luke, pulling him in. 

There was not so much a moment of hesitation as there was a moment of noticing that something was tipping, that Luke himself was sliding forward and down. He remembered thinking that he had been brought in to guard this very person. That Luke was no saint, and would raise fists to defend this idol. That in front of him was the star, and that if the star was pulling him in, he would go. He would orbit. 

Taylor’s mouth was a hot press of lips, and when he kissed Luke, Luke became visible. Seen fully by touch in the dark room. In turn, Luke breathed in a dusty, earthen smell. He heard in Taylor’s breathing the fluttering of moths and the scrape of a cellar door. Taylor’s teeth caught and worried his lip, and Luke felt all the promise of the blood just under his skin, heat in him as though from the core of the earth. 

Luke’s fingers clutched at Taylor, mindless and driven by their own impulses. He leaned into the heat, chasing the sly flick of Taylor’s tongue and the maddening graze of his teeth. 

Taylor smiled against Luke’s mouth. When Luke pulled him back in, he went easily. He kissed Luke over and over again, each press like something was being offered, silent but for the ragged breathing in between. Six promises in succession, six presses of flesh, each firm and ripe and ready to explode under pressure. His touch wandered, now grazing across the tendons of Luke’s neck, then at his jaw, next catching the soft flesh of an earlobe. 

Taylor stepped back. His hands were still pools of heat on Luke’s chest, but he held himself away. His eyes reflected scattered light, and the flush on his face was like a gift held out and waiting. 

Luke knew what you consumed became a part of you. And where you consumed, you stayed. He remembers thinking not _no_ – but rather _not now_ , or _not here_. And he remembers how much he ached when Taylor turned away. 

 

 

Winter pushes out the last vagaries of fall. Surrounded by ice, Taylor is a being who takes up space. He moves with the loose-limbed grace of a man in his own kingdom. 

He looks often at Luke. 

Whereas in autumn, there had been breathing room and the chance to turn away, now Taylor’s eyes are like low-burning coals, his attention like gravity itself. When he reaches for Luke, or crooks a finger, or even so much as tilts his chin in invitation, it is with a heavy sureness. 

Luke thinks of that first autumn night, and the way it had felt when Taylor left – like opportunity was sliding between his fingers, and so each time Taylor silently asks, Luke goes to him. 

Any dark or private space will do. In a closet-sized wine cellar, he pushes Luke against wood-paneled walls. Luke hears clink after clink after clink of bottles nudging against each other every time Taylor rocks into him. The smell of cedar seeps into Luke’s clothes, and for weeks after this, he knows he will not be able to pick up this jacket without smelling a forest and thinking of Taylor. 

Above them are the sounds of footsteps, the tinkle of glasses and conversation, but down here, all the sound seems sucked out of the room. Luke hears only Taylor’s humming, and the ever-complaining bottles, and a ragged and uneven gasping that he eventually realized is his own breath. Snow is tucked into the corners of the small basement windows, and the light comes in milky and blue. It makes Taylor’s skin pale, and the shadows thick. Away from the small spill of light, the rest of the room is lost, and instead of the small space it is, the cellar feels like it could be the first room in an endless catacomb. A hundred thousand stone caverns. A maze. 

The way Taylor touches him is too sure to be gentle. Taylor’s hand can span the entire length of Luke’s jaw, and Luke turns into his touch with an eagerness that does not escape Taylor’s notice. 

Taylor grins, wide. He pushes harder, making the bottles sing, and Luke opens for him. Lips parting in invitation, arms reaching to wrap around Taylor’s form. Taylor presses against his chest until breathing is work, until Luke gasps, turning his face to the side. 

“You’re so happy, right here,” Taylor says. His mouth brushes Luke’s ear and the words have the low tone of a whisper, but steadiness of known fact. 

Luke shivers. Winter, and the world is Taylor’s domain. Taylor is the flickering heat Luke will curl around, closer and closer until he burns, and even then he will reach for more. 

Mouth still so close to Luke that the movements of his lips brush flesh, Taylor says, “Do you remember the very first thing I gave you?” He presses a kiss to the pulse leaping in Luke’s throat. 

Luke remembers sourness, sharp enough to make saliva flood his mouth, and an aching sweetness that still purses his lips. He closes his eyes with the memory of the taste of pomegranate on his tongue. 

 

 

Luke looks back, even though it’s dangerous to look back in these sorts of situations. He looks back, even though the world moves so quickly that to take your eyes off it is to risk finding yourself reduced to nothing more than a pile of dust and salt for the wind to blow away. 

He looks back at Taylor in between the times when Taylor’s hands reach for him, in the spaces that are not their usual dark haunts, and at the times when lust is not making his blood froth into insensibility. He thinks, from the questions on Taylor’s face, that Taylor sees him looking. 

The uncertainty on Taylor’s face grows with the length of the days. There are shadows in his eyes and the longer Luke looks, the more likely Taylor is to turn his face away. 

Taylor is the one to pay the price for looking away. Luke is not on the ice when Taylor falls, but he hears the sound of flesh and bone coming up against steel. He sees the unsteadiness of Taylor’s gait when he tries to rise. 

Taylor’s very fallibility seems to shock him. And after a winter of cocky certainty, all at once, he looks young. He disappears from the ice, from the rink, from the room, curling like a wounded animal in his den. 

Luke seeks him out. The sober light of early spring peers in through Taylor’s windows. From somewhere beyond, Luke hears the shotgun cracking of ice out on the lakes giving way, and the constant drip of snowmelt from the eaves, and everywhere, mud makes the ground treacherous under Luke’s feet. 

Taylor is surprised to see him. And even more surprised by the hand Luke lays on his shoulder in an attempt at comfort. “What do you want?” he asks. His eyes are startled and his expression is dark. 

“I came by to see how you were doing. We could talk. If you want to talk,” Luke offers. Because for all of the meetings of their mouths and their hands, all the stroking of skin and rapid breathing, that is one thing they have not done. 

Taylor’s face darkens further; his brow sets in angry lines. “That’s not how this works,” he snaps. Almost at once, he lowers his gaze. 

It would be easy to pull away now. It would be easy to leave. Luke can feel it – the pull of spring like an itch in his blood that wants to drag him out of the room, and he knows Taylor can feel it, too. 

He knows Taylor’s anger is not directed at him. Is not caused by Luke’s hand, which has once again crept to Taylor’s shoulder. Taylor’s anger is at the relentlessly growing light and the time that is passing, days turning over, and him trapped here in this room. Alone. 

Beyond all the other things that Taylor is – prince and star – he is also just a boy. 

He is lonely. 

Luke lets his hand drift from Taylor’s shoulder to his jaw. He presses lightly, feeling cool skin and the scratch of stubble. He waits. 

Taylor gives to the pressure, turning his face to Luke’s touch, and when Luke kisses him, he does not pull away. 

 

 

Luke thinks every inch of unfurling green is a gift. Every bit of life revealed by the retreating snow is a promise fulfilled, and he gives thanks to a force he cannot give name to, that he has lived to see it. 

But it’s not hard to see that Taylor does not feel the same way. 

He avoids Luke’s touch now, avoids even looking at him. And even all the anger has faded out of him. There are no sure reaching hands now, no lips smiling against Luke’s, and not even the flashes of anger Luke saw in him when he was hurt. 

Even though he walks steadily now, he is always walking away. 

Luke tracks him down. 

He pauses outside Taylor’s door and gathers a handful of white snowdrop and purple crocus. He pulls down a sprig of yellow witch hazel and he holds all these in his hands. 

Taylor answers the door moving slow, like someone who has already tucked the best parts of himself away. He looks at Luke as though he cannot parse Luke’s presence. As though he cannot fathom why he’s there. He says, “I pulled you in, but I can’t hold you here now.” Taylor’s tone is mournful, defeated by the very turn of the earth. He narrows his eyes at Luke. “You must know that.” 

Luke thinks maybe Taylor’s blindness stems from the sun dazzling against the wet earth. Maybe his blindness is of the kind of people who have been so long in the dark that any sudden change is overwhelming. Luke holds the flowers out to him. 

Taylor shakes his head. “I can’t hold you here,” he says again. 

But Luke pushes the buds again towards Taylor’s chest. “Can’t you see that I came back?” 

Behind him, the sun warms Luke’s back. He is offering Taylor light. He is offering warmth. He comes holding the flowers of spring, and when Taylor takes them with one unsteady hand, Luke takes his other in his. 

He holds onto Taylor and pulls steadily, looking at him all the time, refusing to look away, refusing to look back, and instead of parting, step by step, he brings Taylor out into the light. 

* * *

 


End file.
